So, what should you do when you see a CoinGate invoice like the one below?

How to pay a Bitcoin invoice from CoinGate?

To complete the payment, you will have a time window of 15 minutes to 2 hours.

For starters, open Electrum, and go to the Send tab.

In the Amount field, enter the amount of bitcoins you want to send – our advice is to copy the exact value from the invoice. If your Bitcoin wallet only allows a certain amount of digits, then you should round the amount to the higher side to avoid underpaying (for example, in the invoice below, transfer 0.00895 or 0.0090).

In the Pay to field, enter the Bitcoin address to which you want to send the payment. Always make sure that the Bitcoin address you are sending to is correct.

Additional options

There are four ways to get the invoice Bitcoin address into your wallet: (1) manually select and copy the Bitcoin address from the CoinGate invoice to your wallet; (2) click the copy button, and paste the invoice Bitcoin address in your wallet; (3) click Pay with Bitcoinon the invoice, which will open up Electrum with the correct invoice Bitcoin address and payment value already inserted in the required fields; (4) scan the QR code with your mobile Bitcoin wallet or with Electrum.

In Electrum and other wallets, you can also include a Description, which will later remind you what you paid for.

We recommend leaving the Fee slider in the default position, because reducing the transaction fee may cause a delay in its confirmation by the Bitcoin network, causing unwanted problems. Leaving the default fee will let Electrum calculate the required Bitcoin network transaction fee automatically.

Confirm the transaction details once again, and proceed to click Send.Youwill then be prompted to enter your password if you created one when setting up your wallet, and to confirm (or cancel) the transaction.

What happens next?

After the transaction is sent, you will immediately see a confirmation message, because our system will detect the incoming transaction automatically.

If you are making a small purchase, the transaction will be confirmed immediately. Meanwhile, if the transaction is bigger, you may have to wait for it to be confirmed by the Bitcoin network. See the screenshots below.

Seeing either of the two windows below means that you do not need to do anything else – your Bitcoin invoice is paid! Great job – the merchant is notified and will soon process your order.

If you want to pay the Bitcoin invoice value using two or more different wallets or different Transaction IDs, rest assured – this is possible, and please see the part on underpaid orders in the following section.

What can go wrong?

Three things, really. One, you may accidentally (or purposefully) pay too little. Two, your Bitcoin invoice might expire before or after you make a transaction. Three, you can pay too much. Let us go over all of these scenarios, and what you should do if you are facing any problems.

You Underpaid

Most likely, this is the case if you make a transaction, yet the Bitcoin invoice does not switch into confirming/paid state. In the updated invoice (see below on the left) you will see the amount of bitcoins that you sent, as well as the amount that is still left to pay (in the blue box). You should make another transaction to cover the underpaid amount before the invoice expires.

Once you make the sufficient payment, your transaction will be confirmed and you will see a confirmation window with your Transaction IDs on the invoice.

On the other hand, if the invoice expires, you will be displayed a refund form (see the next section on what to do with an expired invoice).

The Invoice Expired

If this happened before you sent a transaction, do not worry and start over with your order. If you did send a transaction, but for some reason the invoice did not update even after you clicked the Check button, then read on.

You most likely made a Bitcoin transaction from a source where you do not have full control over your bitcoins: either an Exchange, a Web Wallet of some kind, or a Third-Party Service. These services may not always make transactions on demand, but rather process your payment request with a delay.

Nevertheless, you should not worry, because your bitcoins will reach us at some time. What you should do is monitor the CoinGate invoice status every once in a while, because the invoice form will update immediately when the transaction is broadcast to the Bitcoin network.

What can then happen is:

(1) You will see a Refund Form on the invoice. Fill out the refund form and you will be paid back within 24 hours.

(2) The invoice will remain expired, but you will see your Transaction ID on the Bitcoin invoice. This means that your seller may still accept your late payment, so hold on for a little while, and contact your seller if you have not already.

You Overpaid

If you accidentally paid too much, or did this on purpose, you will be displayed a refund form such as the one below. To receive a refund for the overpaid amount, please fill out the form and your overpaid amount will be sent to your Bitcoin address within 24 hours.

That is it! These are all of the scenarios that you may face when paying our invoice with Bitcoins. We recommend sticking to Electrum to minimize the risk of expired invoices and underpayments. Refer to our guide here for setting up Electrum.

We hope that reading this guide has helped you understand how to pay for a CoinGate invoice with Bitcoin. If it was your first time making a transaction and you found it difficult and tiring – we assure you that the second time will be much much easier.